Xīnshū 心書
Book of the Heart-Mind (also transmitted as Jiàng yuàn 將苑, “The General’s Garden”) attributed to 諸葛亮 (Zhūgě Liàng, 181–234, 三國蜀; attributed)
About the work
A 50-篇 military-doctrinal compendium devoted entirely to the figure of the jiàng (general) — his types, virtues, vices, ranks of command, and operating principles. Each chapter is a short, often gnomic, prose unit (e.g. Bīngjī 兵機, Zhúè 逐惡, Zhī rén xìng 知人性, Jiàng cái 將才, Jiàng qì 將器, Jiàng bì 將弊, Jiàng zhì 將志, Jiàng shàn 將善, Jiàng gāng 將剛, Jiàng jiāo lìn 將驕吝, …). The work is transmitted under two parallel titles, Xīnshū 心書 and Jiàng yuàn 將苑, with substantially identical content. It is universally attributed to Zhūgě Liàng in the manuscript tradition, but is regarded by modern critical scholarship — and was already so regarded by the late Míng — as a clear pseudepigraphon ascribed to him.
Abstract
Neither the San guó zhì nor the Suí shū jīngjí zhì records a Xīnshū / Jiàng yuàn under Zhūgě Liàng’s name. The work first surfaces in late-Sòng bibliographies (Yóu Mào 尤袤, Suìchū táng shūmù 遂初堂書目; references in Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì); it is widely circulated thereafter under both titles. Late-Míng critical opinion was already firmly against the attribution: Zhūgě Xī 諸葛羲, the 36th-generation descendant of Zhūgě Liàng, in his authoritative anthology Hàn chéngxiàng Zhūgě Zhōngwǔhóu jí (KR5i0078) explicitly excluded the Xīnshū, the Jiàng yuàn, the Liángfù yín 梁父吟 and the Huángniúmiào jì 黃牛廟記 as patent pseudepigrapha; the SKQS 提要 followed this judgment.
The composition window is therefore bracketed not by Zhūgě Liàng’s lifetime but by the work’s actual textual history: post-Táng (absent from the Suí zhì and from the rich Táng-era 類書 citations of Zhūgě materials), present in late-Sòng catalogs — i.e. ca. TángSòng transition through Northern–Southern Sòng (here bracketed broadly to the Sòng dynasty proper, 960–1279, given the absence of any earlier secure attestation). Substantively the text reads as a later digest of Six-Dynasties / Táng military-officer didactic literature dressed in Zhūgě Liàng’s ascribed voice; the famous interrogation-of-character passage in Zhī rén xìng 知人性 (“七觀”: jiān zhī yǐ shìfēi ér guān qí zhì etc.) is among the most-quoted passages of Chinese military pedagogy.
The bibliographic record: not in Suí shū jīngjí zhì; Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì (under Zhūgě Liàng’s name); Suìchū táng shūmù; circulated widely in MíngQīng military cóngshū; excluded from the SKQS Bīngjiā lèi main collection (although the SKQS editors discussed it in 提要 contexts).
Translations and research
- Sawyer, Ralph D., with Mei-chün Sawyer. 1996. The General: Strategy and Tactics in Ancient China. Westview. — includes a complete English translation of the Jiàng yuàn with introduction discussing the pseudepigraphic attribution.
- Yáng Bīng-ān 楊丙安, ed. 中國兵書集成 (Zhōng-guó bīng-shū jí-chéng). Jiěfàngjūn / Liáo-shěn shū-shè, 1988– . — modern facsimile-reprint series including the Xīn-shū / Jiàng yuàn.
- For the broader Zhū-gě-Liàng pseudepigraphic corpus and its philological history see the SKQS 提要 to KR5i0078 Hàn chéng-xiàng Zhū-gě Zhōng-wǔ-hóu jí.
- No book-length monograph dedicated to the Xīn-shū / Jiàng yuàn located in Western languages.
Other points of interest
The two transmitted titles, Xīnshū 心書 and Jiàng yuàn 將苑, have spawned a minor philological dispute about which is original. The Zhūgě tradition prefers Xīnshū (recalling his Chū shī biǎo posture of moral self-presentation); modern editorial preference (e.g., Sawyer 1996) tends to Jiàng yuàn on the grounds that the chapter contents are squarely about the jiàng and have nothing to do with xīnfǎ or 心學. The dispute is moot for the question of authenticity, which is settled in the negative.
Links
- Parent author note: 諸葛亮 (with the canonical late-Míng exclusion list of pseudepigrapha).
- Related authentic Zhūgě anthology: KR5i0078 Hàn chéngxiàng Zhūgě Zhōngwǔhóu jí.
- Wikidata (Jiàng yuàn)
- ctext.org Jiàng yuàn
- CHANT (Chinese Ancient Texts) database